Mindfulness

I started my day with a short 10 minute meditation session to increase my mindfulness. I have not smoked yet today because the day is in flux and still needs to be fully planned. But yesterday I thought a lot about my situation. I have a bad habit of taking excess leisure time and not focusing on the tasks at hand. I let distraction rule my life.

I am a product of the digital age. I have an iPhone which is set to check my mail every hour and also receive push mail from MobileMe. I have my desktop mail program check every five minutes or so, a news aggregator that refreshes a list of 40 or so news feeds every hour, and a twitter client that pulls from 20 twitter feeds. I pretty much invite distraction into my routine with no filters.

Mindfulness—what is it?

In psychological terms, I would equate the eastern idea of "mindfulness" with the western idea of the "super-ego." This is the portion of the mind that oversees and directs actions. Mindfulness is something that needs to be exercised, or else it ceases to function. Excess masturbation tends to be a problem for me because the drive to masturbate (which would be focused in the id) is more powerful than my super-ego's desire to moderate it.

This is something I'm working on changing. I noticed yesterday that my mindfulness had gotten a bit stronger for reasons I don't quite understand. What I mean by this is I was able to notice when my drive to masturbate was about to engage, short-circuit it, and then take a step back and look at what triggered that instinct.

So far, I have been able to recognize that a lot of the time I want to masturbate I'm not even horny. I want to masturbate when I am bored, lonely, feel inadequate, or feel jealous of someone else and their life or accomplishments. Masturbation seems to be my go-to state to distract myself from anything that makes me feel uncomfortable about myself. Oddly I also want to masturbate while listening to a really romantic song by a male artist. I don't remember the particular details of the track data, but I remember that I was trying to quash my romantic response to the song with masturbation. I guess I really am a romantic at heart when I let myself be.

How to Increase Mindfulness

I'm working on this right now. The first thing it takes is an honest decision to take any path that seems like a valid way to approach greater concentration. This is a recognition that paths that lead to change may be very uncomfortable. It's also a recognition that I am choosing paths without knowing whether that path will be beneficial, but I am going to stick with the path for as long as I can t see what change happens along the way. I know I can always backtrack if I need to, but the path to true change is going to require taking some steps that may need to be permanent modifications of my behavior.

The first thing I've done is broken my day up into definite sections. There is a "morning routine" section in which I wake up, stretch, do some yoga, meditate, and prepare breakfast. While eating breakfast, I sit at the computer and connect to all my distractions. I allow all the news for the day and e-mails pour into my computer, and as I eat, I go through all of them. I take care of all next actions that arise out of the news: I read all articles, watch videos, click on any links that interest me, and apply to any jobs and gigs that appear.

Then I turn it all off. I close the twitter feeds and news aggregator, log out of facebook, turn off e-mail checking on my phone, and take my mail client offline. This becomes a time for me to create and focus on tasks without distraction. I am accepting that I will not be the first applicant for any jobs that come in, I will not know about any news, and I will not be distracted by any friends. My cell phone is still on, so I can receive phone calls. I am also still connected to the Internet, so any active research I want to do is available. The important thing is that I have disabled all passive gathering of information. Nothing (except a phone call) can come into my world to distract me unless I allow it. The world will be there when I want it.

It's that easy

But it's not: this is just the point I'm at today. I really want to make this change. There is a large part of my being fighting against this at the moment, but I am not letting it take the reigns today. I am planning to alternate between well-defined periods of taking in information from the world and creating new things will give me the focus I need in my unstructured unemployment. Hopefully this will satiate the part of myself that hungers for information and distraction while giving me the space to create and accomplish the things I want to.

It's working so far, and it's almost noon. Only twelve more hours to go!

All the best,

j